Monthly Archives: June 2015

PostGIS 2.2 is due for release sometime in August of 2015. Among other things, PostGIS 2.2 adds some interesting 3D functions via SFCGAL. ST_Extrude in tandem with ST_AsX3D offers a simple way to view a census polygon map in 3D. With these functions built into PostGIS, queries returning x3d text are possible.

x3d format is not directly visible in a browser, but it can be packaged into x3dom for use in any WebGL enabled browser. Packaging x3d into an x3dom container allows return of an .x3d mime type model/x3d+xml, for an x3dom inline content html.

In this case I added a non-standard WMS service adapted to add a new kind of request, GetX3D.

x3d is an open xml standards for leveraging immediate mode WebGL graphics in the browser. x3dom is an open source javascript library for translating x3d xml into WebGL in the browser.

“X3DOM (pronounced X-Freedom) is an open-source framework and runtime for 3D graphics on the Web. It can be freely used for non-commercial and commercial purposes, and is dual-licensed under MIT and GPL license.”

If you can see this, your browser doesn’t
understand IFRAME. However, we’ll stilllink
you to the file.

Why X3D?

I’ll admit it’s fun, but novelty may not always be helpful. Adding elevation does show demographic values in finer detail than the coarse classification used by a thematic color range. This experiment did not delve into the bivariate world, but multiple value modelling is possible using color and elevation with perhaps less interpretive misgivings than a bivariate thematic color scheme.

However, pondering the visionary, why should analysts be left out of the upcoming immersive world? If Occulus Rift, HoloLens, or Google Cardboard are part of our future, analysts will want to wander through population landscapes exploring avenues of millennials and valleys of the aged. My primitive experiments show only a bit of demographic landscape but eventually demographic terrain streams will be layer choices available to web users for exploration.

Demographic landscapes like the census are still grounded, tethered to real objects. The towering polygon on the left recapitulates the geophysical apartment highrise, a looming block of 18-22 year olds reflect a military base. But models potentially float away from geophysical grounding. Facebook networks are less about physical location than network relation. Abstracted models of relationship are also subject to helpful visualization in 3D. Unfortunately we have only a paltry few dimensions to work with, ruling out value landscapes of higher dimensions.

Fig 3 – P0010001 Jenks Population

Some problems

For some reason IE11 always reverts to software rendering instead of using the system’s GPU. Chrome provides hardware rendering with consequent smoother user experience. Obviously the level of GPU support available on the client directly correlates to maximum x3dom complexity and user experience.

In some cases the ST_Extrude result is rendered to odd surfaces with multiple artifacts. Here is an example with low population in eastern Colorado. Perhaps the extrusion surface breaks down due to tessellation issues on complex polygons with zero or near zero height. This warrants further experimentation.

Fig 2 – rendering artifacts at near zero elevations

The performance complexity curve on a typical client is fairly low. It’s tricky to keep the model sizes small enough for acceptable performance. IE11 is especially vulnerable to collapse due to software rendering. In this experiment the x3d view is limited to the intersections with extents of the selected territory using turf.js.

var extent = turf.extent(app.territory);

In addition making use of PostGIS ST_SimplifyPreserveTopology helps reduce polygon complexity.

Xml formats like x3d tend to be verbose and newer lightweight frameworks prefer a json interchange. Json for WebGL is not officially standardized but there are a few resources available.